Schumann was twenty-eight years old when he composed in 1838 a cycle of eight pieces for piano, the Novelletten (Novelettes) op.21. Presented by the composer as ‘long, bizarre tales’, they were written around the same time as the Kinderszenen, two years before his marriage to Clara, to whom he confided: ‘I have written a frightful amount of music for you in the last three weeks – light-hearted pieces, Egmont stories, family scenes with fathers, a wedding, in short, the most amiable things.’ At that time, Clara Wieck (later Schumann) was nineteen years old and still inaccessible; Robert told her that he had given the set its title in homage to her, but punning on her namesake, the soprano Clara Novello! He had particularly enjoyed her singing in Leipzig and she was almost the same age as ‘his’ Clara. ‘Wiecketten didn’t sound very good’, he teased her.

Martin Helmchen has taken up this cycle with all the passion and virtuosity for which he is famed, coupling it with his favourite late Schumann piece, the Gesänge der Frühe composed three years before his death, and three excerpts from Clara’s Soirées musicales. He was determined to record this programme on a Bechstein pianoforte of 1860 with which he has fallen in love, a model identical to Liszt’s usual piano, in order to capture every possible colour and all the polyphony of this flamboyant musical kaleidoscope.